Authors: A. L. Lorentz
“The best observatory in the world,” Jill said. “If we want an idea what’s going on in space without any satellites, that’s where we need to go.”
Hilo airport remained flooded, as did anything within a few hundred yards of the previous shoreline on the Big Island. Remnants of beachfront hotels bobbed up and down in the water. High overhead a blue and white plane soared past the torn agriculture on the rainy eastern slopes before passing between the two volcanic peaks. Three F-22 Raptors followed close behind in a wide delta formation. The planes passed the ancient lava flows down past Kona and back out to sea.
The passengers inside the C-40 slumped in their seats, most of them napping, aware they’d be heading up to the observatory immediately after landing.
“Landing in five,” the pilot said over the intercom.
“Where?” Allan whispered across the aisle to Jill, waking up. “We just passed over the Big Island and didn’t stop.”
“That major never said. Only the pilots had security clearance for the flight plan.”
“Why would they take us to Maui to get up to Mauna Kea? Isn’t there a military base at the foot of the mountain? Isn’t that what the pilots mentioned? Camp Kilua or something?”
“I dunno, Allan, try asking one of our escorts.” Jill motioned to the stoic soldiers accompanying them from Beale.
Allan looked back, but the soldiers just shook their heads. Allan looked out the opposite window. One of the Raptors zoomed past, circling long ahead as the others triangulated around the plane. Below, a wide gray line stood out against the brilliant blue ocean.
“Oh no, we’re not landing on one of the islands at all.”
“Arrival at USS Theodore Roosevelt in two minutes!” the pilot shouted. “Strap in back there!”
Jill bristled. “A 737 landing on an aircraft carrier?”
One of their escorts overheard and reassured her. “Ma’am, this C-40 is a certified
COD
, approved for landing on larger carriers. Fifty years ago they landed C-130s on these decks, and those birds had fifteen more feet on each wing than we do.”
As the carrier came into view, it became more unbelievable to the occupants that they were attempting to land the big jet on that little strip. The air braking hit hard, flaps fully extended and rattling for maximum drag and the slowest landing speed possible. The plane jittered and yawed tremendously when slips of the trade winds found their way under the western facing wings.
Straining under the weight of the greatly decelerated jet, the wings began to creak. After ten seconds of white-knuckled hoping from its passengers, the plane finally shuddered into a bumpy touchdown. Passengers slammed forward as brakes clamped down. Smoke poured from the wheels as the big jet fought not to disappear over the long edge of the ship.
After a labored squeal from the wheels, everything stopped. A faint burning smell filled the cabin as jubilant passengers rose from their seats and applauded the pilots. The formerly quiet soldiers patted the docs on the back and high-fived each other.
“You’re making me think this isn’t as routine as you let on,” Allan mentioned to the same soldier.
“Ain’t nothin’ routine for the last few days, sir.
COD
deliveries in passenger planes
were
regular once, but never by a 737. The unexpected and exceptional is the new normal.”
Allan had to admit, after jumping out of a helicopter and getting rescued from a burning hill, the normally terrifying landing became more of a curiosity. For the crew of the carrier, though, this was something almost none of them had seen in their service aboard.
Deckhands on the runway applauded as the crew debarked from the plane. The sailors parted for a decorated older man with a white crew cut. He seemed to be at a much higher level of command than anyone else around, wearing an eagle with wings spread under his left collar.
“You two are coming up with me,” he said gruffly and turned swiftly, beckoning the scientists to follow to the elevator beside the tower. As they walked, their new guide relayed the long story of how he came to love Big Stick, his ship.
“Sir, isn’t the USS Theodore Roosevelt based in San Diego?” Jill asked.
Allan gave her a strange look.
“Went on a tour once,” she whispered. “There’s a lot you still don’t know about me.”
“Yes, Doctor,” the captain answered. “We’ve been repositioned farther west. Rumor control tried to quash rumblings about a surprise attack from China or North Korea. Word on the water is mainland China went silent after the Event. I been at this for a long time, wouldn’t put too much faith in that without any confirmation from the joint chiefs. I know we maneuvered out here to rendezvous with you folks, but my crew is still jumpy as hell.”
Fear of being drawn into a conflict made tension on the ship palpable. The steeply raked hull carried memories of bloodshed and war refugees. Previous deployments of
The Stick
were Bosnia, Kosovo, and first salvos in Iraq’s Operation Enduring Freedom. Older officers remembered bloodied bodies with missing limbs fished out of collapsed buildings. This time the refugees were Americans and the big guns were silent in the face of an unknown and unfathomably more destructive force. Many sailors carried the look of conscripted kamikaze, coming to terms with an impending doom beyond their control.
The captain led Allan and Jill past one triage wing after another. Even the massive interior of the ship was filled with survivors fished from the water or found yelling from under rubble. Many clung to life in cots beneath the wings of fighter jets. For some, even a cot was a luxury, as the less dire cases simply lay on the cold metal hangar floor, staring at the steel-beamed ceiling like it was a lowering coffin lid.
Some of the survivors were giddy, happy to be alive, if not well. This grew a carnival atmosphere, nests of chattering exuberance dotting pools of suffering. The scientists shared the same thought:
How would they act if they knew what we do?
“Are these all refugees from San Diego?” Allan asked.
The captain nodded with concern. “We were floating offshore until they told me to high-tail it out here for you folks. We were almost at capacity already, now I’ve got two more civilians, and a 737 on my deck.”
He looked up at them before heading up a stairway, motioning for them to follow.
“My orders are to get you folks to the Big Island. I want to give you a good view of the effort involved. That C-40 you flew in on costs about seventy million dollars. So the way I see it, that makes your bill thirty-five a piece. Even with depreciation I’m sure it’s more than a professor ever makes, so you better earn it in the days to come.”
He led them up to a small room with massive glass windows and a parade of buttons and knobs. Every inch of the room was scoured by those of lesser rank going back and forth barking into radios and occasionally looking out to see their orders commencing on the runway underneath.
A group of Navy men massed by the C-40 for a purpose unknown to the two PhDs watching from the command tower.
“Hate to see a beautiful old bird die like this,” the captain lamented. “But these are different times. If Fatboy over there in North Korea decides to run any of his ancient MIG-29s by us, I need a full runway to get those Raptors in the air. That alarm bell could go off any second now. The horse you folks rode in on has to go. Pronto!”
A pushcart pulled the plane to within inches of the edge of the runway and a crew of nearly a hundred sailors swarmed the fuselage.
The captain turned to watch the action on the deck. He wiped his cheek as a dose of old-fashioned muscle pushed the C-40’s nose over the lip of the back end of the carrier’s long, broad runway with a clang.
“We’d take the wings off first, but then we’d have nothing to push with,” the captain said, apparently thinking the docs would be interested in the details, or maybe just justifying the actions to himself. “Such a shame . . .”
A horrible scrape sealed the great bird’s fate, as it flipped violently up and over the edge before crashing into the ship’s wake. It went out of view for a moment, then reappeared to slowly recede and sink, one wing after the other, into the unseen realm of whales and giant squid.
“Why did they divert us here?” Allan asked. “Couldn’t we have landed at the base on the Big Island? Camp Kilo, or something?”
“Well sure!” he faked enthusiasm. “I plan on visiting Camp Kilauea myself eventually, if we make it through what’s a-comin’. Kilauea’s just a place for R&R. What you really mean is Bradshaw Army Airfield. A nice idea at first, plenty convenient for where you’re goin’ I admit, but they don’t have pilots on the ready over there.
“Bradshaw’s just a tiny airstrip on the little Pohakuloa Training Camp. I got plenty of experienced pilots right here. Better to ditch an old C-40 and have three Raptors on the ready on the Teddy than let them collect dust on the island. And I do mean that literally-Bradshaw doesn’t have hangars for Raptors.
“There’s also the matter of storing jets near active volcanoes.”
“Excuse me?” Jill asked, worried. “Active?”
“USGS is stretched pretty thin, but they think something’s coming. The whole Pacific Ring of Fire has been shaky since the Event. Evacuation orders went out this morning to Seattle, the Cascades, Yellowstone, basically the whole West Coast
and
the Big Island.”
“You mean Kilauea, right?” Allan said. “That’s always active.”
“I mean the whole sh’bang, Doc. Bradshaw sits right between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. That sounds like a doubly dangerous place to store hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware to me. Much safer here on the Teddy under my watch.”
A subordinate rushed to the captain, showed him something on a tablet and pointed at one of the screens. The captain studied both then grabbed his binoculars.
“Speaking of your tour guides and their expensive equipment, they’re almost here. As much as it pained me to push that old bird off my ship, I did so only to welcome three new chicks to the nest.”
“We didn’t see them till we were about to land. Did they fly all the way here from Edwards?” asked Allan.
“More or less,” stated the captain. “They’ve had a refuel bird hovering out there mid-Pacific since this whole thing started. Otherwise an F-22 would splash down about 500 miles from here. Lucky for your friends, our offshore tankers survived the tsunami. Your big bird wasn’t without escort for very long, though. It’s real slow and, as you’re about to see, these little birds are real fast.”
A roar scorched their ears and they turned their heads in unison.
“Here they come!” screamed the captain with a wide smile.
The first F-22 came gracefully down toward the carrier, but all eyes were soon on the second, which zoomed by the tower. The blast of air rattled the old tower windows.
“I could put her in the brig for that!” screamed the captain, with a wide smile. “But she won’t be here long enough. Should let her have a little fun before I ruin her day.”
The first F-22 skidded onto the deck. The tailhook caught and the sleek fighter with faceted stealth edges quickly rolled to a bouncing stop. The jet that made the flyby soared higher into the sky to loop around.
The crew quickly moved the first jet off the runway and into a temporary storage position to the right of the tower as the next steadied itself for landing.
In a matter of minutes all three were safely on the deck. The captain scurried back down the tower stairway to meet the pilots. “I don’t normally give my pilots this kind of attention!” he shouted back to the scientists, struggling to keep up. “Don’t usually give civilians the royal tour of my ship, either.”
Lee spoke first when she met the captain emerging from the tower door.
“Captain, I wasn’t expecting to see you on deck. They told us at Beale we were going to the Big Island, but when helicoptering us to Edwards they rerouted us in-flight to Rough Rider. Is everything alright, sir? What’s with the pit-stop?”
“Funny question considering our present circumstances, isn’t it?” said the captain, rhetorically. “The five of you, follow me.”
The captain led them to a pilot classroom on one of the decks deep within the ship.
“Boys and girls,” he started, standing at the little lectern. “I didn’t get to where I am by sugarcoating anything. I know you thought you’d probably be landing at Bradshaw, but y’all aren’t taking those planes anywhere near a volcano right now.”
Lee and her squad slumped in their seats.
“I know to ground a pilot’s plane is the worst insult in the Air Force besides clipping your wings altogether, but here’s to hoping it’s only temporary. Your planes will be just fine on this ship while you take the doctors here up to the observatory and see to their safety while they . . .” He made a strange expression and looked at the scientists. “Do whatever it is they intend to do.”
“Sir?” Lee raised her hand. “How are we getting over there?”
The captain smiled at Lee. “According to your records, Ms. Green, you qualified for helicopter flight before earning your wings, yes?”
“Shit,” Lee said under her breath. “Yes, that’s correct, sir. Short hop only, and never trained off base.”